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Fyodor Dostoyevsky
123 quotes
“I have never in my life met a man like him for noble simplicity, and boundless truthfulness. I understood from the way he talked that anyone who chose could deceive him, and that he would forgive anyone afterwards who had deceived him, and that was why I grew to love him.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Part 4, Chapter 8 (tr. Constance Garnett, 1913)
“I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared. And it was after that that I found out the truth. I learnt the truth last November — on the third of November, to be precise — and I remember every instant since.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sky was horribly dark, but one could distinctly see tattered clouds, and between them fathomless black patches. Suddenly I noticed in one of these patches a star, and began watching it intently. That was because that star had given me an idea: I decided to kill myself that night.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seemed clear to me that life and the world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say that the world now seemed created for me alone: if I shot myself the world would cease to be at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for anyone when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become void like a phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness, for possibly all this world and all these people are only me myself.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all, as, for instance, through space and time. Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible things happen to it!”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? If once one has recognized the truth and seen it, you know that it is the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be, whether you are asleep or awake. Let it be a dream, so be it, but that real life of which you make so much I had meant to extinguish by suicide, and my dream, my dream — oh, it revealed to me a different life, renewed, grand and full of power!”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart — my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In dreams you sometimes fall from a height, or are stabbed, or beaten, but you never feel pain unless, perhaps, you really bruise yourself against the bedstead, then you feel pain and almost always wake up from it. It was the same in my dream. I did not feel any pain, but it seemed as though with my shot everything within me was shaken and everything was suddenly dimmed, and it grew horribly black around me. I seemed to be blinded, and it benumbed, and I was lying on something hard, stretched on my back; I saw nothing, and could not make the slightest movement.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love. I want suffering in order to love. I long, I thirst, this very instant, to kiss with tears the earth that I have left, and I don't want, I won't accept life on any other!”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They had no temples, but they had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had a certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they talked to one another.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They sang the praises of nature, of the sea, of the woods. They liked making songs about one another, and praised each other like children; they were the simplest songs, but they sprang from their hearts and went to one's heart. And not only in their songs but in all their lives they seemed to do nothing but admire one another. It was like being in love with each other, but an all-embracing, universal feeling.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth, so happy and sinless before my coming. They learnt to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of falsehood.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All became so jealous of the rights of their own personality that they did their very utmost to curtail and destroy them in others, and made that the chief thing in their lives. Slavery followed, even voluntary slavery; the weak eagerly submitted to the strong, on condition that the latter aided them to subdue the still weaker. Then there were saints who came to these people, weeping, and talked to them of their pride, of their loss of harmony and due proportion, of their loss of shame. They were laughed at or pelted with stones.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I go to spread the tidings, I want to spread the tidings — of what? Of the truth, for I have seen it, have seen it with my own eyes, have seen it in all its glory.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen the truth — it is not as though I had invented it with my mind, I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection that I cannot believe that it is impossible for people to have it.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying — to others and to yourself.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (1990), p. 44: "Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either i…
“There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I seem happy to you . . . You could never say anything that would please me more. For men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive but in finding something to live for.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'But,' I [Dmitri Karamazov] asked, 'how will man be after that? Without God and the future life? It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?' 'Didn't you know?' he said. And he laughed. 'Everything is permitted to the intelligent man,' he said.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My feelings, gratitude, for instance, are denied me simply because of my social position.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Нет бессмертия души, так нет и добродетели, значит, всё позволено. ... Без бога-то и без будущей жизни? Ведь это, стало быть, теперь всё позволено, всё можно делать?”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in M. M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1973) p. 70
“The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naive and simple-minded than we assume them to be. And this is true of ourselves too.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are to blame for them.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you know that ages will pass and mankind will proclaim in its wisdom and science that there is no crime and, therefore no sin, but that there are only hungry people. "Feed them first and then demand virtue of them!" — that is what they will inscribe on their banner which they will raise against you and which will destroy your temple.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people.'”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Paper, they say, does not blush, but I assure you it's not true and that it's blushing just as I am now, all over.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For socialism is not merely the labour question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“‘No one but you and one ‘jade’ I have fallen in love with, to my ruin. But being in love doesn't mean loving. You may be in love with a woman and yet hate her.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why count the days, when even one days is enough for a man to know all happiness?”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith is not in power but in truth.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ivan Karamazov ... does not absolutely deny the existence of God. He refutes Him in the name of a moral value. ... God, in His turn, is put on trial. If evil is essential to divine creation, then creation is unacceptable. Ivan will no longer have recourse to this mysterious God, but to a higher principle – namely, justice. He launches the essential undertaking of rebellion, which is that of replacing the reign of grace by the reign of justice.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Albert Camus, The Rebel, A. Bower, trans. (1956), pp. 55-56
“Ivan is the incarnation of the refusal to be the only one saved. He throws in his lot with the damned and, for their sake, rejects eternity. If he had faith, he could, in fact, be saved, but others would be damned and suffering would continue. There is no possible salvation for the man who feels real compassion.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Albert Camus, The Rebel, A. Bower, trans. (1956), pp. 56-57
“Throughout the nineteenth century you can find writers using brothers and sisters as ways of projecting different aspects of the single composite self. The most famous example is the Brothers Karamazov, who, with their differing emphases on body, mind and spirit, seem to be the three parts of one total individual – the collective son of their father, perhaps Man himself.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Brothers Karamazov is the most magnificent novel ever written; the episode of the Grand Inquisitor, one of the peaks in the literature of the world, can hardly be valued too highly.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sigmund Freud, "Dostoevsky and Parricide" (1928)
“The Brothers Karamazov is a joyful book. Readers who know what it is about may find this an intolerably whimsical statement. It does have moments of joy, but they are only moments; the rest is greed, lust, squalor, unredeemed suffering, and a sometimes terrifying darkness. But the book is joyful in another sense: in its energy and curiosity, in its formal inventiveness, in the mastery of its writing”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Richard Pevear Introduction to 1992 translation